Well, today's chapter. I was going to follow with the Retainers Review, but I decided it would be more useful to post the identification of each of the elephants of the Main Procession first. This way you'll be able to identify retainers and elephants (even without their maharajas) in the Retainers Review pictures.

As you know, there were supposed to be 50 princely elephants in the Main Procession, after the 6 elephants of the Aides-de-camps and Curzon and Connaught. But as I mentioned before, two of them had to be absent: the Gaekwar of Baroda and the Maharaja of Cutch. The line was still 25 elephants long, but 2 of them went alone, without an elephant on their side: Narsingarh and Maler Kotla.

The Main Procession began on December 29 1902, Monday, in the morning. The first two elephants were the one with the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the one carrying the Maharaja of Mysore. These were the most photographed elephants. As the parade continue photographers took less and less pictures (unfortunately, until the end of the Procession, that was more portraited too. Anyway, all the elephants had their pictures, so I will show them one by one here.

The reason I haven't made this elephants yet is because both have been made already. The Hyderabad elephant made by Britains still can be bought, and the Mysore elephant was custom made for a few customers by my friend Bill Spear. Eventually, when collectors wouldn't be able to get them any more, I'll consider making them.

The first elephants waiting in Queen's Street.
This is the left side of the Jumma Masjid
This is taken from the main entrance. You can see all along Khas road. You can also see the women photographers taking pictures in front, first row.

Something crazy about this picture. It's been manipulated. The Nizam wasn't clear, so someone placed his picture inside his howda instead. And even crazier, someone placed a picture of the Gaekwar of Baroda inside the Mysore elephant's howda, not aware at the moment that the Gaekwar wasn't able to be in the Main Procession.

The Nizam's elephant was dressed in yellow and gold. It is surprising that yellow photographed black in the photographs of the time. It happened the same with red color. I read that it had to be with the presence of gold during the developing of the picture, but haven't really confirmed that.

I love the detail in this picture

Even the Mysore elephant is not in my plans for now, I'd LOVE to make the guards. I have a few great pictures of them, I definitely like their spears.

Lastly, a couple of still frames from the Durbar films. One of the films was taken from ground level, right side of the elephant columns, at the bottom of the stairs of the main entrance of the Jumma Masjid. The second one was taken also at ground level, when the elephants were passing in fron of the Main Hall.